Tonight on "The Hobbit": Thorin shows us his bad side.

Spiders are dead, Bilbo can turn invisible, and Thorin was CAPTURED!  Things start to feel political as Tolkein describes the tension between Thorin's captors, the Wood-Elves, and dwarves of yore. Apparently, a group of dwarves stole some beloved treasures from the wood-elves, and when called out for their bad deeds, the dwarves were all "Man, this was mine to BEGIN with!". I wonder how kids reading the story take all of this: do they just accept that grown people were meant to quarrel? 

Anyway, Thorin is now in jail, and the wood-elves know he's a dwarf, and now it's time to play what I can only describe as Wood-Elf-Dwarf Police Drama:

"Why did you and your folk three times try to attack my people at their merrymaking?" asked the king.

"We did not attack them," answered Thorin; "we came to beg, because we were starving."

"Where are your friends now, and what are they doing?"

"I don't know, but I expect starving in the forest."

"What were you doing in the forest?"

"Looking for food and drink, because we were starving."

"But what brought you into the forest at all?" asked the king angrily.

At that Thorin shut his mouth and would not say another word.

I can just see a king with a pointy hat, long beard, and layers of gold chains pounding the metal table, yelling until he's red in the face. Thorin sits at this table under a burning bulb/torch, head hung low, wrists cuffed/roped, a little Kevin-Spacey insane-but-composed, sticking to hunger as his alibi all the way, maybe smoking a cigarette slowly. Kids reading alone at home think, "Wow, Thorin is so cool.  He even knows how to use the fifth amendment!"  This scene is almost sexy.  A king? The accused, sticking to his story, providing smart-assed responses, rejecting an authority figure? All we need is some club music and a blonde holding a test-tube labeled "Evidence".  For the record, Thorin just won my Favorite Character badge.

So he gets thrown in the elf-slammer and is given lots of food and water while the other dwarves wander around aimlessly and hungrily looking for him.  </scene>